Competing for summer internships, using a Twitter contest

STUART ELLIOTT

Friday

Mar 25, 2011 at 5:17 AM

More than 300 applicants submitted 13 comments on Twitter in 13 days. The agency chose 32 finalists from that group, who were interviewed for six spots.

A VENERABLE agency has turned to a new form of communication to find its annual batch of interns in a shift that underlines how Madison Avenue is seeking to change the way it reaches out to everyone, from consumers to potential employees.

Campbell Mithun, an agency founded in Minneapolis in 1933 that is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, is to announce on Friday the names of the six young people who have been chosen to intern there this summer. For the first time in the six years that the intern program has been offered, agency executives turned to a nontraditional method of accepting and assessing applications.

The intern search was conducted through Twitter, which applicants were asked to use to make their cases of why they wanted one of the six paid internships in four areas: account management, creative, media and technology. The internships are to begin on June 6 and run for 10 weeks.

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In honor of the favorite number of a Campbell Mithun founder, Ray Mithun, the competition is known as the Lucky 13. To reflect that, the applicants were asked to submit 13 comments on Twitter in 13 days, from Feb. 13 through 25.

The applicants were asked to tag their comments with the hashtag #L13. That is Twitter-talk for adding the phrase “#L13” to every comment so that anyone with a presence on Twitter can find all the comments, whenever and by whomever they were posted.

Campbell Mithun also created a Twitter feed, using the handle @the_Lucky_13, to keep those interested abreast of the process.

Initially, 425 people registered as applicants, agency executives said, and more than 300 submitted comments on Twitter. A committee of 37 Campbell Mithun employees, called the Lucky 13 Twitter response team, sifted through thousands of comments to identify 32 finalists, who were interviewed in person or through Skype. The six interns, several from Minnesota, were chosen from the finalists.

“We’ve been wanting to shake up the process for some time,” said Debbie Fischer, vice president and human resources manager at Campbell Mithun, which has about 275 employees who work for clients like Famous Footwear, General Mills, Hefty, Land O’ Lakes, Supervalu and Toro.

Given “the increasing digital nature of our day-to-day work, we thought it would be appropriate to add a digital component,” Ms. Fischer said, particularly with an effort aimed at 20-somethings.

“Everyone in this generation is on social media,” she added.

The results “exceeded our expectations,” Ms. Fischer said, both in the quantity of applications — about double from last year — and the quality.

And “we were surprised in the level of engagement of the candidates with one another,” she added, which was enabled by conducting the hunt on Twitter.

“For the first time, everything was out in the open; they knew who their competition was,” Ms. Fischer said, which led to the applicants “stepping up their game.”

Mark Manalaysay, a junior at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia who will be one of the six interns, echoed her comment.

“It was very public, which kept it very interesting,” said Mr. Manalaysay, 21. “We’ve actually been very social with each other.”

“It’s a ‘people of our age’ type of deal,” he added, laughing. “We were giving out our Twitter and Facebook.” Mr. Manalaysay, an aspiring art director, will be a creative intern.

Another of those selected, Genette Sekse, 22, said she found the unconventional way of applying “a lot more appealing than writing a cover letter or sending a résumé.”

“And it was fun checking out the competition,” she added. “We started tweeting each other: ‘That was a really cool thing you submitted. I’ve got to beat that.’ “

Ms. Sekse, who is from Norway, will be a media intern at Campbell Mithun. She is a junior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.

The four other interns are: Cory Etzkorn, a junior at the University of Minnesota, technology; Connor Johnson, a junior at St. Olaf, media; Vince Koci, a senior at the University of Minnesota, creative (copywriter); and Natalie Neal, who graduated from St. Olaf last year and is now a volunteer teacher at the International School in Moshi, Tanzania.

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Campbell Mithun is among several agencies that are adding social media to the mix to interest students in advertising as a potential career.

For instance, DDB Brazil, part of the DDB Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group, sponsored a contest for Brazilian students. The winner, Lucas Cabral Maciel of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, has been sent to nine countries in 99 days with a requirement to report continuously in social media like Twitter (@99NOVAS) on interesting cultural trends he finds along the way.

And the last two Advertising Week events in New York featured a contest called the Big Ad Gig, which offered the winners paid, monthlong freelance stints as copywriters and art directors at agencies like Atmosphere Proximity, part of the BBDO Worldwide unit of Omnicom; Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners; and Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, part of WPP.

Among the materials contestants were asked to submit were video clips to be uploaded to YouTube. Some freelancers were later hired by the agencies for which they worked.

Campbell Mithun plans to offer internships for summer 2012, Ms. Fischer said, adding that it was too early to discuss what part social media would play in the process. “You’re just going to have to stay tuned,” she said.

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